Seated around a conference table, the snow-capped mountains of Vermont looming over Lake Memphremagog visible to those facing north, 18 men and women met in Newport yesterday morning in furtherance of a conspiracy.

Considering that it was open to all, including the press, it is not a covert conspiracy. Considering the participants – a Main Street merchant, the CEO of North Country Hospital, the local school superintendent, among others – it would have to be called quite an Establishment conspiracy.

But it might just shake up Newport.

Which could use it. The Orleans County seat and the self-styled “gateway” to and from Canada, Newport is not without its charms. To begin with, there’s the lake, 687 square miles (mostly in Canada) of cold, deep, water surrounded by hills and woods. Right downtown can be found one superb restaurant, a couple of pretty good lunch spots, and the Pick & Shovel, where it is not quite possible to buy anything anyone might ever want, but close.

On top of all that, the small (about 5,000 souls ) city has what Frank Knoll, who chaired yesterday’s meeting, called its “picture-book setting,” and an old-fashioned, funky feel to it.

But neither is Newport without its troubles. Income is as low and unemployment as high as anywhere else in Vermont. Two thirds of the pupils in the city’s elementary school are eligible for reduced price lunches. Out of work and out-of-sorts young men and women often lounge about Main Street, discomfiting if not actually frightening passers-by.

It isn’t that there is no economic activity going on. Two developers are planning to build hotels along the lakefront close to downtown. City officials aren’t sure whether each developer is trying to scare the other away, or whether they think the city can support two hotels. Some locals are not convinced it can support one.

Newport’s economic woes go back decades, as do well-intentioned efforts to rectify them. This latest try may have some advantages the earlier versions lacked: Outside support (financial and otherwise), local energy, inclusiveness, and a funny name. It’s a RUDAT.

Or, to be precise, a R/UDAT, short for Regional/Urban Design Assistance Team, a project of the American Institute of Architects. The AIA has been running R/UDAT programs since 1967, and 139 of them have been completed, most recently in Lake Havasu City, Arizona, according to the Institute. None of the first 139 projects has been in Vermont

The 140^th is here because the Newport City Renaissance Corporation – that’s the group that was meeting yesterday morning -asked for it, and got it.

What is a R/UDAT?  It’s a planning process. The AIA chooses “a totally volunteer ‘Dream Team,’” of architects, planners, and economists, in the words of  Patricia Sears, the Executive Director  of the Newport City Renaissance Corporation. The experts “visit the community and provide written recommendations addressing planning, economic development, and transportation issues,” according to a document prepared by Sears.

Led by architect James Abell of Scottsdale, Arizona, who has already made one trip to Newport, the five-person team will come to town for five days, first to listen, then to recommend. Its members will listen to anyone who chooses to talk to them., They will recommend ways to perk up Newport, specifically the downtown, the lakefront, and a park and shopping area a short walk across a bridge over the narrow neck of water between the Lake proper and its South Bay.

As was clear at yesterday’s meeting, everybody agrees about one thing “wrong” with Newport: Insufficient access to the Lake, which is there, but hard to get to. It’s also invisible from most of Main Street. To many Newporters, the building in which the meeting was held – the Emery Hubbard State Office Building pictured above) – is part of the problem. No doubt it is an improvement over the dilapidated shops and houses it replaced. But had it been differently sited when it went up in the 1990s, perhaps it would not have blocked the view of the lake.

Magog, Quebec, up at the other end of the Lake, did it better, one and all agreed. Its lakefront is open, accessible, visible. Sears said she plans to take the R/UDAT team up to Magog while they are here.

Worse, the lake itself might be endangered. One of the guests at the meeting, Kingsley Boyd of the Memphremagog Watershed Association, said the lake was “in distress” because of excessive sedimentation, nitrogen, and phosphates.

“If the quality of the water is not addressed,” he said, “that takes away one of your assets.”

The five R/UDAT days begin Wednesday evening, March 18 at North Country Union High School with a sugar on snow party meet-and-greet get-together, or what Patricia Sears called ” a sort of dog and pony show about what a R/UDAT is and what the process is.”

The next day, she said, the visitors, who are donating their time, will tour the city and sit in on a small focus group. On Friday they will meet with various groups of local businesspeople, educators, and officials in the afternoon.

Friday evening, Sears said, there will be an “open mike night town hall meeting.” From Saturday through Monday morning, the team members will “work at their own speed, pulling together everything they’ve seen and heard,” as they prepare their final report.

“Monday we are printing it,” she said, 150 copies of  about 100 pages of a report to be presented Monday evening,” again at the high school.

“Included in the report is an action plan looking at both short-term and long-term goals,” Sears said. “The AIA  will send back one or two people in a year hence to see how we’re doing.”

All this is unprecedented for any town in Vermont. It could also end up being productive for Newport, depending on precisely what the experts propose, and on how much support and opposition it arouses.

It seems noteworthy, though, that so far it does not seem to have provoked any opposition at all. This is the Northeast Kingdom, traditionally skeptical about the advice of outsiders and about planning, which some locals see as a threat to property rights. Not long ago, the prospect of an elite team of outsiders outlining a planning process might well have aroused a lot of talk about “strangers coming up and telling us what to do.”

The R/UDAT process attempts to avoid such opposition by making sure that it is the locals who initiate contact with the AIA, and by including local participation throughout the process. And in this case, the leaders of the Newport Renaissance Corporation made sure that the R/UDAT steering committee was broadly based. It includes local retailers, city officials, bankers, educators, company presidents and the publisher of the local newspaper.

And Sears said that perhaps local people will be more likely to accept the findings of  ”experts who are not beholden to us,” than they would if the team had been selected – and was being paid – by the Renaissance Corporation.

Sill, she, Knoll,  and the others are aware that some kind of opposition may well spring up after the “dream team” makes its recommendations next month.